The narrator of this song expresses sympathy for women whose sole purpose in life is to look beautiful because the basis of such a goal is a fallacy.
Next, we see a great interest in deception and false appearances. Many of the songs talk about disillusionment that results from peeling away the carefully crafted veneer of our society. These songs attempt to reveal the truths below our society’s surface reality, and many of them also address the violence that seems inseparable from our culture. In songs like “Everything Evil” and “Where is the Love” we see commentary not only on violence in American cities, but also on foreign wars and occupations abroad. The domestic struggles are often associated with tensions stemming from a racially and economically segregated society, which results in feelings of moral decay and insecurity, which is ironic given that “security” is supposedly our nation’s #1 priority.
Interestingly, the trends we observed in our peers’ songs seem to transcend genre and time, suggesting that the problems addressed in the songs are ageless: an inescapable element of the human condition. We witnessed how one trend could lead to another (i.e., materialism leading to superficiality and disillusionment, and then back to materialism to “fix the problem”), resulting in a cycle of discontent. Unsurprisingly, many of the songs do not have a hopeful tone, although some do, and perhaps they can inspire a reappraisal not only of our society, but most importantly, ourselves.